Box Office: War for the Planet of the Apes Sends Spider-Man to 2nd

July 18, 2017 - By Alex

War for the Planet of the Apes had a strong opening weekend, slotting higher than Rise but quite a bit lower than predecessor Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

War for the Planet of the Apes landed with $56.3 million in 1st, up about $1.5 million versus Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011). Compared to Dawn (2014) War‘s start is $16.3 million lower so while the 3rd film in the rebooted trilogy is the best reviewed yet (95% on Rotten Tomatoes against 90% for Dawn and 81% for Rise), its final US take most likely won’t match that of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes ($208.5 million). Including Monday numbers War currently stands at $62.1 million and will probably finish its domestic box office run between $150 million and $180 million. Also important to note is War for the Planet of the Apes ended up costing $20 million less than Dawn ($170 million). So all in all it’s still a very good performance.

Spider-Man: Homecoming fell harder than anticipated, down 62.2% with $44.2 million in 2nd. That’s a bigger drop than any other Spider-Man film and sadly the same goes for the MCU. So what actually happened? It’s probably competition, mainly from War for the Planet of the Apes, and it’s the middle of the summer so weekdays tend to be higher while weekends drop. Sure, it’s a steep decline, but Homecoming has had very strong weekdays and so it’s now already at $212.7 million after 11 days, more than the entire US gross of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($202.9 million). A final domestic total in the neighborhood of $300 million is still possible for Homecoming, but $280 million is just as likely.

Despicable Me 3 grabbed $19.4 million in 3rd, off by 42.4% compared to the animation’s 2nd weekend. With $191 million in 18 days, by the end of the week Despicable Me 3 should become Illumination Entertainment’s 6th consecutive feature to top $200 million domestically. In the animation space only Pixar made it further with 9 such consecutive releases between 1999 and 2010. Despicable Me 3 also helped get Illumination past $2 billion in the US and over $5 billion worldwide.

Baby Driver made off with $8.7 million in 4th, down 33% from the previous weekend. So far Baby Driver raised a very impressive $74.3 million in 20 days and I’m starting to believe it might just make it all the way to $100 million domestically.

The Big Sick rounds out the top 5 with $7.6 million, adding 2271 theaters that helped push it up 111.5%. After 25 days (only 4 in wide release) the R-rated romantic comedy is now at $16.8 million, on its way to $30-40 million in the US.

Wish Upon opened to $5.5 million in 7th, not a particularly good start for this $12 million PG-13 horror.